Some people may consider the new 120GB Xbox 360 hard drive to be a complete rip-off a little expensive at $179 considering that you can buy a 2.5” external drive of the same capacity for under $100. And Microsoft’s justification for the price? "I know it sounds expensive to a lot of consumers but we are comparable to those types of drives and also we have to go through a lot more testing and security," said Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg. Anyway, Xbox-Scene has a good guide on how you can make your own working 120GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 at a much lower price.

First you will need to get hold of a Western Digital Scorpio BEVS-LAT drive (it’s not too expensive and it’s the only drive that is known to work). Next you need to download Hddhacker v0.90 (built by The Specialist) and dump your hddss.bin firmware file from your 20GB Xbox drive onto a floppy disk by attaching the drive to a SATA controller (most modern motherboards should be fine), and then flash this file to the new 120GB drive. After this your drive should be ready to go. For full details on this procedure, read the guide on Xbox-Scene. This is one area where the PS3 can clearly show its superiority, as users can add their own 2.5” drive without voiding the warranty. Which reminds me, the warranty on both the new drive and the Xbox will probably be useless after doing this, so keep that in mind!

I too think that $179 bucks for a 120 gig "Microsoft Certified" hard drive is stupid.
Any way we can save a few bucks by doing it ourselves is all for the better.

Microsoft is addicted to money like some people are addicted to crack, and the xbox360 is proof of that. I have several friends that have the Xbox360 and bought it brand new. Exactly when the warranty expired, the Xbox360 would die on them.
2 of them sent it back to be repaired and it cost over $130 for each repair. Not only that, Microsoft uses it to their advantage because they can spy on people by looking at the hard drive and seeing anything they have on it.
Now the updates that you have to get to play online games is stupid. This allows them to spy on you remotely. Any bit of data they can get on you they use it to make money (information = money). Many of these people when they got the updates, the Xbox360 died on them causing them to pay for Microsoft's mistake.

How can a update be for security when it opens a back door for Microsoft?
Did you know that if you refuse to install XP service Pack 2 on a machine with Service Pack 1 you get banned from Microsoft updates?
Enough is enough Microsoft, you can take Vista, Windows XP service Pack 2, and the Xbox360 and shove it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not only that, Microsoft uses it to their advantage because they can spy on people by looking at the hard drive and seeing anything they have on it.
Now the updates that you have to get to play online games is stupid. This allows them to spy on you remotely. Any bit of data they can get on you they use it to make money (information = money). Many of these people when they got the updates, the Xbox360 died on them causing them to pay for Microsoft's mistake.

How can a update be for security when it opens a back door for Microsoft?
Did you know that if you refuse to install XP service Pack 2 on a machine with Service Pack 1 you get banned from Microsoft updates?

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This sounds like reliable certified data, tell me more about it ( '-')

The firmware updates for the 360 were pretty much worth it every time. And so far I have not heard about M$ *spying* on it. If they do internal survey about their own network it's okay I guess.

And you should just gtfo if you use XP without SP2 and latest hotfixes. SP1 is not secure at all at this point.

But you can take that HDD on and off with no worries of ruining the warranty to upgrade to higher capacity MS certified hard drives? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I dont fault MS for making money, I mean, they are a company and that is there business plan, however, theres a difference between making money and absolutely slaughtering the bums of your consumer base. in the end, this winds up being as much, if not more than the PS3 itself. I still love mine, but this elite model is a crock. We current owners should be able to trade ours in for a substantial discount and pay only 50 to 100 bucks for the elite model.

But you can take that HDD on and off with no worries of ruining the warranty to upgrade to higher capacity MS certified hard drives? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I dont fault MS for making money, I mean, they are a company and that is there business plan, however, theres a difference between making money and absolutely slaughtering the bums of your consumer base. in the end, this winds up being as much, if not more than the PS3 itself. I still love mine, but this elite model is a crock. We current owners should be able to trade ours in for a substantial discount and pay only 50 to 100 bucks for the elite model.

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Uh, no. Maybe you forgot that Microsoft is a corporation, not a charity. No company is going to give anyone that much of a discount to trade in old hardware. The only hardware company I know of that gives a discount for trading in old hardware would be ATI, which only pays $50 for old cards. (When you buy a new one)